Responding to the detection of malcode after the malcode acquires a home on a computer within a network is a costly event in terms of manpower expended investigating the breach, quarantining the computer, performing additional virus scanning, manually creating firewall rules, blocking traffic over particular ports on the network switching fabric, and/or completing other troubleshooting and cleansing techniques. Such manpower costs for addressing a malcode breach are realized even when no additional damage occurs after the initial breach by the malcode. Conventional techniques employ algorithms such as Message Digest Algorithm 5 (MD5) and Secure Hash Algorithm 1 (SHA-1) that compute signatures (i.e., fingerprints) that uniquely identify entire computer files, and compare the computed signatures to the signatures of known malicious files to determine whether the computer files are malcode. Excessive computational resources are required to implement the known malcode detection schemes. Further, because a single signature applies to the entirety of a data file, the entire data file must be processed before determining that the file does not match a known malicious file. Thus, there exists a need to overcome at least one of the preceding deficiencies and limitations of the related art.